The girl drove the horse right in through the crowd until Jeffrey Whiting faced Rogers. Then Jeffrey, gritting his teeth on his pain, took up his fight again.
“Rogers,” he shouted, “you did this. You got Rafe Gadbeau and the others to knock me on the head and put me out of the way, so that you could spread your lies about me. And you’d have 102 won out, too, if it hadn’t been for this brave girl here.
“Now, Rogers, you liar,” he shouted louder, “I dare you, dare you, to tell these people here that I or any of our people have sold you a foot of land. I dare you!”
Rogers would have argued, but Rafe Gadbeau pulled him away. Gadbeau knew that crowd. They were a crowd of Frenchmen, volatile and full of potential fury. They were already cheering the brave girl. In a few minutes they would be hunting the life of the man who had lied to them and nearly ruined them.
A hundred hands reached up to lift Ruth from the saddle, but she waved them away and pointed to Jeffrey’s broken arm. They helped him down and half carried him into Doctor Napoleon Goodenough’s little office.
Ruth saw that her business was finished. She wheeled Brom Bones toward home, and gave him his head.
For three glorious miles they fairly flew through the pearly morning air along the hard mountain road, and the girl never pulled a line. Breakfastless and weary in body, her heart sang the song that it had learned in the Glow of Dawn.